At this past week’s meeting, Adam Gamoran from the UW Center for Educational Research spoke to the Board about ability grouping. Dr. Gamoran talked about how ability grouping often ends up grouping students by race and SES because these students enter school having had different early childhood experiences and different educational opportunities (recall Donna Ford discussing the number of books in the homes of low income and middle income families).
Dr. Gamoran noted that there are often differences in the classroom experiences of high and low ability groups of students in regards to teacher expectations, academic rigor, and teacher ability.
He also emphasized that there is no simple solution to the achievement gap. Heterogeneous or homogeneous grouping by themselves will not reduce the gap in achievement. However, there are some clear cut solutions that are obvious according to Dr. Gamoran.
- No more dead end classes like general math for the low ability students;
- high academic expectations for students of all ability levels; and
- teachers should not be assigned in a way that results in only the newest and least experienced teachers working with the low ability students, in other words, all students deserve quality instruction.
In discussing heterogeneous grouping, Dr. Gamoran noted that differentiation is hard work for teachers, and they need a lot of support and training in order to be successful.
Dr. Gamoran also shared an example of a school where heterogeneous grouping was successful. This was a school that was 51% free and reduced lunch, but because the school had a strong, dynamic leader and had gotten grants, they were able to recruit a top notch staff. Not only was the principal able to select which teachers worked in the school, but approximately half of the student body had to go through an interview process to get into the school, so this magnet school was selective about its teachers and its students. Class size was kept to 15 students and instruction went at a fast pace. Students who were struggling were expected to attend tutoring sessions on Saturdays. I think there was an expectation that parents would be involved in their student’s education, but I am not sure about that.
Obviously the situation in the Madison schools is different from this ideal, and that’s why I think it is important for the Board and the administration to hear from students and parents what it is like in the classroom. I should add that Bill Keys was very annoyed that the Board was even discussing this issue because he believes that the Board has no place in the classroom. According to Mr. Keys this is the responsibility of the teachers and administrators and they know better than the members of the Board what should be done in the classroom. However, I would argue that the teachers and administrators don’t know any better than the Board does about what happens in the classroom, and they certainly don’t know what it is like for high ability students in those classes. Those of us who have sat around the kitchen table while our children talk about their boredom, frustration, and lack of challenge need to help them understand and make our voices heard.
The Board, at least in theory, should reflect the community’s views on, and expectations for, education. Education is not exclusively the domain of teachers, as Bill Keys would have it, or of administrators. Teachers, who feel the need to be unionized unlike any other licensed profession I know, do not have the right to complete, unfettered autonomy in the classroom. (I say this as the daughter of a retired labor leader. Collective bargaining is about wages and benefits, not about setting the standards for the “work product”, here the education of our children. Licensed professions set their standards, self-police, but then don’t also dictate the terms of their members’ pay packages. The teachers’ hybrid arrangement is problemmatic–they want to be treated and compensated like professionals, but then hide behind MTI whenever challenged on the adequacy of their performance.)
Who represents the children in these discussions? I’d argue that parents have as much right to be at the table as any other stakeholder; moreover, I believe this is the primary role of the school board, representing the children.
A minor point: the most experienced teacher, if that is measured simply by longevity, is not necessarily the best teacher. A new teacher can bring fresh enthusiasm and a much more current curriculum into a classroom–I’m thinking of a terrific math/physics teacher our daughter had a couple years’ back who taught the lower track general physics class as well as Calc 2, the most advanced math course.
Finally, as long as I’m posting here, earlier this week I heard a WPR piece on AP classes. The discussion took for granted that the AP curriculum was desirable; the question was how to encourage more students to participate. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that West is blending its curriculum at at time when everywhere else is offering a more challenging curriculum to those who want to work harder and learn more, something I’d argue is much more difficult if not impossible to achieve in a classroom of 25+ students, spanning the ability and motivation spectrum.
Jeff,
I don’t know how Dr. Gamoran knows “of a school where heterogenous grouping was successful.” Let’s see: a selected faculty, a selected student body, a class size limited to 15, tutoring on Saturday’s, and a parental involvement component of some kind. So how, exactly, does Gamoran know that it was the heterogenous grouping that was making the difference? With all of these variables acting at once, how can it be assumed which among them was driving whatever effect was measured?
Isn’t this the reason that randomized, controlled, double-blind experiments are the “gold standard” for knowing what one is talking about?
Art,
You are absolutely correct in identifying all of the possible variables that no doubt played a role in the success of students at the school Dr. Gamoran described. Can you imagine what our Madison students would be able to do in an environment like that?
However, I didn’t mean to suggest that Dr. Gamoran was arguing that it was the grouping that was the cause of the academic success. What he was doing was describing a situation where mixed ability grouping had been successful and noting all of the other factors that played a role in the results. Dr. Gamoran was very clear in his presentation that how we group students, in and by itself, will not change student performance.
“All the other factors that played a role in the result.” I feel that is a key phrase school board members need to keep in mind as they discuss the role of heterogenous classes in Madison schools.
Last fall I attended a meeting the Assist. Superintendent of Secondary Schools had with parents, who were asking about heterogenous grouping of classes. These parents were talking about their children’s experiences, but they were also asking what the administrator’s knew about what the literature said on this topic. She felt the literature was split on the effectiveness of this approach. Fair enough – straight-forward answer. It does not surprise me that the social science, education (other) literature may not be clear, because there are so many variables that can affect success – academic achievement for all students at all ability levels.
However, our school board could take Dr. Gamoran’s example of a successful heterogenous classroom environment and ask the administration to come back with a table comparing Dr. Gamoran’s example with a MMSD heterogenous class make up. How would they be the same, what would the differences be and what issues for learning would that present? For example, if one of those criterion Dr. Gamoran cited were “student is able to manage behavior in the class,” what would this mean for a MMSD class? Do examples exist in MMSD, what have we seen in changes in all children’s learning for the positive?
Questions of this sort do not put the School Board in the classroom, but they do put the School Board in the leadership role of publicly discussing what the issues are that might affect the success or determine the appropriateness of heterogenous groupings in MMSD’s classrooms.
If anyone says to a school board member, “That is too hard to determine, but the educational literature indicates this as the way to go,” alarm bells should begin to sound. Even though you may not know something with certainty, that does not mean that board members do not need to ask key questions and to have public discussions and to provide direction to the administration.
Lastly, that does not mean that the School Board does not take the steps to see that discussions among administrators and teachers are broad-based, robust and include opportunities for differing opinions to be considered via such venues as the Performance and Achievement Committee. A presentation here or there on one part of an academic topic seems inadequate. Afterall, the School Board IS the governing body responsible for academic achievement and IS the deciding governing body responsible for how the Madison schools move forward.
Thank you, Barb. And I agree that what sounds suspiciously like a private-run charter-type school that gets to select its student body and get serious commitments from their students and parents/guardians, has very little to compare with a typical Madison (public) school. Any school that gets to select its students from among those who would CHOOSE to attend it, has a better chance of getting students who are committed to making the most of their educational opportunities in that school. That’s part of how magnets work well where they work – they don’t tend to work as well when people want their kids to go there just because it is (or becomes) the only smallish alternative to a large collector school. Even there, note that I said “as well”. The schools where the teachers most want to be tend to be the ones that can hang onto the best teachers too.
BTW, a very good friend of mine who has taught for three years in Milwaukee and then over ten in Madison, has told me many many times that teaching a “low achiever class” is something she far prefers to a class of the same size, with as many varying levels of achievement and potential as there are students in it. She’d rather have 25 “difficult kids” than 25 kids from across the spectrum, all of whose needs she would be expected to meet with essentially the same curriculum and only her own differentiation means (and she is literally a “master teacher”, and has lots of differentiation means up her sleeves!).